Social Media

Veveo's Mobile Video Search Funded for $28M: Partnering with Verizon

Veveo, a mobile search company, has raised a total of $28 million—$14 million of which came from a second round earlier this year, though the amount was not disclosed until recently. The funding was provided by Norwest Venture Partners, Matrix and North Bridge Venture Partners.

Veveo's flagship product is Vtap, a mobile search engine that attempts to work around the typical problems you'll encounter with mobile search as it currently stands. Due to a reliance on wireless networks that are often slow for web browsing, Vtap has created a predictive technology that lets you search for video and Wikipedia queries. Typing in partial words and even incorrect spellings gives Vtap a head start on what it is you're looking for based on associations, and the fact that it's a niche search engine looking for videos in particular.

To this end, it will need to gain traction quickly in order to be very successful, as mobile browsing technology improves on a regular basis, especially with the growing interest in mobile video. Additionally, its niche search is a foundation for the type of predictive technology it can employ in order to make its search product superior, and expanding that to other areas of search would be an increasing necessity for future growth.

Veveo's Vtap is scheduled to launch September 10, supporting Windows Mobile and an Ajax version for the iPhone. Support for J2ME is set to be released later in the fall. Veveo is also in the process of partnering with both cell phone makers and wireless providers, working on revenue-sharing programs. It's reportedly already partnered with Verizon to power its Internet TV search as well, which will surely aid in Verizon's growing mobile television offerings. Google is also working on its own mobile search front, recently having created an Ajax search application for the iPhone as well.

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